NFL declares Lady Gaga's Super Bowl halftime show the most-watched...of all time!
After Lady Gaga performed at the Super Bowl earlier this month, the ratings showed that it was the second most-watched halftime show ever, just behind Katy Perry's 2015 show. But now, the NFL is claiming that in fact, Gaga's show was the most-watched musical event OF ALL TIME.
How can that be? Well, if you count how many people watched it on all the platforms on which it was available, the numbers add up. While close to 118 million viewers caught Gaga on TV, they also watched on NFL's digital platforms, including Twitter, You Tube, NFL.com and NFL Mobile. According to the NFL, all told, the show reached more than 150 million unique people.
An NFL exec said in a statement, "The Halftime show provides the ultimate world stage for an artist. Through her incredible music, choreography and unifying message, Lady Gaga created a unique performance that will remembered for years to come."
Courtesy of the NFL, here are a few stats, broken out by platform:
YouTube
The Halftime Show is the most-watched video on the NFL’s YouTube channel, with more than 24 million views and more than 140 million minutes watched.
During Lady Gaga’s live performance, there were 2.2 million real-time tweets about the #PepsiHalftime show, as well as a total of 5.1 million tweets about the performance leading up to, during, and in the 10 minutes following.
More than 49 million video views, and more than 5 million reactions, comments, and shares.
Giphy
GIFs from the Halftime show generated more than 75 million views across GIPHY’s network.
Source-ABC
Retail sales fall unexpectedly in January
Retail sales slipped back unexpectedly in January, following on from December's dip.
Official figures, from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), showed retail sales volumes dropped by 0.3% compared with the previous month, well below the 0.9% rise expected.
The ONS said the data indicated the first signs of a fall in the underlying trend since December 2013.
It said evidence suggested higher fuel and food prices were key factors.
Compared with January 2016, sales were up 1.5%, the weakest performance since November 2013.
Figures earlier this week from the ONS showed inflation rose to its highest level in two and a half years at a time when wage growth was slowing down.
Fuel prices jumped 16.1% in January, the biggest changed since September 2011.
Wary
Kate Davies, senior statistician at the ONS, said: "In the three months to January 2017, retail sales saw the first signs of a fall in the underlying trend since December 2013.
"We have seen falls in month-on-month seasonally adjusted retail sales, both in conventional stores and online, and the evidence suggests that increased prices in fuel and food are significant factors in this slowdown."
Analysts said consumers were becoming wary of spending at a time when employment and earnings growth was slowing and inflation rising.
Samuel Tombs at Pantheon Economics said consumers were starting to "crumble" in the face of inflation pressure.
Ruth Gregory, from Capital Economics, said: "January's surprise fall in the official measure of retail sales volumes has brought the recent run of resilient economic news to an abrupt end. And the rest of the year is shaping up to be tough on the high street, given the expected squeeze on consumers' real pay growth."
Vauxhall UK and Germany raise concerns on deal talks
The UK and German governments are seeking to safeguard jobs in the potential merger of the Vauxhall and Peugeot carmakers.
Ministers have raised concerns after PSA Group, maker of Peugeot cars, said it was in talks to buy General Motors' loss-making European business Opel.
Opel has thousands of workers at its plants in Germany and UK arm Vauxhall.
Business Secretary Greg Clark said he would make a "strong case" for the firms to keep manufacturing in the UK.
Mr Clark met with union officials on Wednesday to discuss the future of Vauxhall, which employs 4,500 staff at plants at Ellesmere Port and Luton.
Meanwhile, Germany's government has signalled its concerns and frustrations with the possible deal.
Economy Minister Brigitte Zypries said it was "unacceptable" that Opel and French firm PSA had not consulted ministers or unions before going ahead with the talks.
German ministers will discuss the deal with the French government in an effort to limit the potential impact on German workers, Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman said.
In a bid to contain the outrage, General Motors (GM) chief executive Mary Barra travelled to Germany to answer questions about the deal on Wednesday.
PSA also said its chief executive Carlos Tavares planned to meet senior German officials, possibly including Mrs Merkel, in the near future.
Opel employs about half its workers, about 19,000 people, in Germany.
Ministers will not judge the deal yet, but "it is clear that the government will accompany this process", Mrs Merkel's spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters.
The announcement from PSA, which is 14% owned by the French state, comes a week after US carmaker GM reported a loss of $257m (£206m) from its European operations last year.
That was the 16th consecutive loss-making year for GM in Europe, bringing its cumulated losses on the continent since 2000 to more than $15bn.
PSA, which already works with GM in Europe on several projects, said a takeover was among "numerous strategic initiatives" being considered.
Source-BBC
Kushner family may step away from Marlins acquisition
Should current Miami Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria be nominated by President Donald Trump as the U.S. ambassador to France, as has been reported, real estate mogul Charles Kushner and his family will no longer be interested in buying the team.
In a statement Wednesday, Kushner's son-in-law Joseph Meyer said, "Our family has been friends with Jeff Loria for over 30 years, been in business together, and even owned a AAA baseball team together. Although the Kushners have made substantial progress in discussions for us to purchase the Marlins, recent reports suggest that Mr. Loria will soon be nominated by the President to be Ambassador to France."
"If that is true, we do not want this unrelated transaction to complicate that process and will not pursue it," Meyer added. "The Kushners remain interested in purchasing a team and would love to buy the Marlins at another time."
Kushner's son Jared is married to Trump's daughter Ivanka and serves as the president's senior adviser.
Last week, Forbes reported that a "handshake agreement" was in place for the team. The offer was said to be for $1.6 billion.
ESPN later reported that Charles Kushner was part of a potential purchase group. It was not known, however, whether that was the same group linked to the offer reported by Forbes.
Source-ABC
US actor Ashton Kutcher urges end to child sexual exploitation
Actor and human rights campaigner Ashton Kutcher has urged US lawmakers to support efforts to help bring an end to child sexual exploitation.
At a senate hearing on Wednesday, a visibly emotional Mr Kutcher said it was time for "society and government" to defend the vulnerable.
He said that he had been exposed to things "no person should ever see".
Mr Kutcher was speaking as chairman of Thorn, an organisation that develops software to locate victims of abuse.
"The right to pursue happiness for so many is stripped away, it's raped, it's abused, it's taken by force," Mr Kutcher, 39, said.
He told the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Washington that new technology was needed to prevent websites from carrying adverts promoting the sexual exploitation of minors.
"Technology can be used to enable slavery, but it can also be used to disable slavery," Mr Kutcher said, adding: "Can we build the tools that are better than their tools to fight what is happening?"
He said that one of the tools his organisation had created, Spotlight, helped identify 6,000 victims in six months. It was developed after a 2012 survey found that 63% of underage victims were being bought or sold online.
Mr Kutcher, who is married to actress Mila Kunis and has two children, said that he aimed to help victims around the world with his work at Thorn after being affected by what he had seen.
"I've seen video content of a child that's the same age as mine, being raped by an American man who was a sex tourist in Cambodia. This child was so conditioned by her environment that she thought she was engaging in play."
He told those present at the Ending Modern Slavery hearing that his organisation had been approached by authorities to help track online perpetrators with new technology.
"We were the last line of defence - an actor and his foundation," he said, adding: "That's my day job, and I'm sticking to it."
Source-BBC
Spouses of CARICOM leaders to address violence against women
The high rate of violence against women will be among issues discussed when the Forum of the Caribbean Community’s (CARICOM’s) Spouses of Heads of State and Government on the Every Caribbean Woman, Every Caribbean Child (ECWECC) initiative begins in Guyana tomorrow.
The Guyana-based CARICOM Secretariat said that the two-day meeting will seek to hammer out the specifics on the way forward for this initiative.
The ECWECC initiative is expected to provide opportunities to improve the lives of women, children and adolescents. It focuses on four priority issues: teenage pregnancy; violence against women and children, including trafficking in persons; cervical cancer and mother to child transmission of HIV in the Caribbean.
Guyana’s First Lady, Sandra Granger, said the initiative evolved out of the Every Woman, Every Girl (EWEG) Initiative of former United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, which was launched in 2014. She said that ECWECC took on board Caribbean realities, resulting in the four areas for priority intervention and the expanded focus to include the child, irrespective of gender.
These include the Caribbean having the second highest rate of teenage pregnancy in the world after sub-Saharan Africa, with an estimated 20 per cent giving birth before the age of 19, cervical cancer being the second leading cause of cancer deaths among Caribbean women aged 15 to 49 and accounting for 13 per cent of all cancer cases.
The meeting is also expected to discuss the high rate of violence against women and girls, which also involves trafficking in persons.
“Invitees include regional and international partners who have expressed a willingness to come on board to assist… providing resources, both financial and intellectual to push it (the initiative) forward,” Granger said.
The forum is funded by Gilead Sciences Inc and organised by the Office of the First Lady of Guyana in collaboration with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the CARICOM Secretariat.
CARICOM leaders endorsed the ECWECC initiative at their summit here in 2016, and a report of the forum will be presented to them at their inter-sessional meeting, which also begins tomorrow.
Source-CMC
Jamaica is first C'bean country to launch IMF-approved National Summary Data Page
Jamaica has become one of the first countries globally and the first in the Caribbean to launch an IMF-approved National Summary Data Page (NSDP).
The page was launched earlier today at the Bank of Jamaica auditorium in downtown Kingston, by Brian Wynter, governor of the Bank; Carol Coy, director general of the Statistical Institute of Jamaica (Statin); and Darlene Morrison, deputy financial secretary at the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service.
The NSDP provides public access to a wide range of economic, financial and socio-demographic statistics.
The page contains regularly updated economic information from the BOJ, Statin and the Ministry of Finance, and can be accessed on the websites of those three bodies.
Macroeconomic and financial information available includes data on more than 20 different areas including: Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the Consumer Price Index (CPI), Government Debt, stock market performance, foreign exchange rates, interest rates, population size and more.
The information is open to all, including journalists, international rating agencies, and the general public.
Jamaica joins 12 other countries offering this service — mainly African countries including Nigeria, Botswana and Zambia. The only other country outside of Africa to belong to the group, apart from Jamaica, is Honduras in Central America.
Trump drops US commitment to Mideast deal
US President Donald Trump on Wednesday halted Washington's quest for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying he would back a single state if it led to peace.
The new president warmly welcomed Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House and hailed the "unbreakable" bond between their countries.
And -- while he urged Netanyahu to "hold back" from building Jewish settlements for a "little bit" -- Trump broke with the international consensus insisting on a two-state future.
"So I'm looking at two-state and one-state, and I like the one that both parties like. I'm very happy with the one that both parties like. I can live with either one," he said.
"I thought for a while the two-state looked like it may be the easier of the two but, honestly, if Israel and the Palestinians are happy, I'm happy with the one they like the best."
This change in the US stance was calculated to please Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition, and Trump's views on the shortcomings of the Palestinian position will delight them.
"I think the Palestinians have to get rid of some of that hate that they're taught from a very young age," he said, echoing Netanyahu's argument that the Palestinians are not ready for peace.
Netanyahu had warm words for the Israeli-US alliance, and hammered home his own prerequisites for peace.
"First, the Palestinians must recognize the Jewish state. They have to stop calling for Israel's destruction," he said.
"Second, in any peace agreement, Israel must retain the overriding security control over the entire area west of the Jordan River," he added.
This region contains the entire West Bank area that would represent the heart of any Palestinian state as conceived in all previous international agreements.
The previous US administration of Barack Obama had warned Israel that if it did not reach a two-state deal with the Palestinians, it would never reach an accommodation with the Arab world.
But Netanyahu insisted he was already developing closer security ties with his Sunni neighbors, who share Israel's concerns about Iranian subversion and "radical Islam."
And he urged Trump's administration to get on board.
"For the first time in the life of my country, Arab countries in the region do not see Israel as an enemy, but increasingly as an ally," he told Trump.
"I believe that under your leadership, this change in our region creates an unprecedented opportunity to strengthen security and advance peace."
But whatever the view in Cairo and in Riyadh, the change in the US position, which was revealed overnight by a White House official, triggered Palestinian despair and consternation in international capitals.
The second-ranking official in the Palestine Liberation Organization, Saeb Erekat, denounced it as an attempt to "bury the two-state solution and eliminate the state of Palestine."
And he implicitly warned Israelis that any single state that emerged would not be a specifically Jewish nation.
"There's only one alternative," he told a news conference. "A single democratic state that guarantees the rights of all: Jews, Muslims and Christians."
The new US message deliberately echoed the long-standing Israeli position: No peace deal can be imposed from outside and the agenda for talks must reflect the reality on the ground.
Naftali Bennett, the right-wing leader of the hardline Jewish Home party and an opponent of any Palestinian state, cried victory.
"A new era. New ideas. No need for third Palestinian state beyond Jordan and Gaza. Big day for Israelis and reasonable Arabs. Congrats," he tweeted.
But Trump's decision flew in the face of an international consensus that any final status agreement must be based on a return to Israel's 1967 border -- albeit with land swaps.
Just five days before Trump's January 20 inauguration, Obama's outgoing US administration was among 70 countries to endorse this vision at a peace conference in Paris.
And just a month before that, Obama's ambassador to the United Nations allowed a Security Council motion that criticized Israeli settlement building to pass without the usual US veto.
Addressing a US-Israeli conference in December, the then secretary of state John Kerry called settlements a "barrier" to progress.
Under Trump, that vision appears dead, and Washington has aligned itself with Netanyahu's government and its supporters in the right-wing settler movement.
Speaking in Cairo after talks with Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, UN chief Antonio Guterres warned that "everything must be done" to preserve the two-state solution.
France, which organized the January peace conference, was also unimpressed.
Its ambassador to the UN, Francois Delattre, told reporters "our commitment to the two-state solution is stronger than ever."
Trump has tapped son-in-law Jared Kushner and lawyer Jason Greenblatt to lead peace efforts.
Source-AFP
Talks Sought on Stabilizing Afghanistan
A second round of international talks in Moscow on the stabilization of Afghanistan ended Wednesday with participating countries calling for Central Asian nations to be included in future discussions.
Representatives from Afghanistan were included in the talks for the first time, joining those from Russia, Pakistan, China, Iran and India.
"In the context of possible broadening of this negotiation format, an understanding was reached to develop regional efforts to stabilize the situation in Afghanistan by involving at the next stage the potential of other countries, primarily from Central Asia," Russia's Foreign Ministry said after the meeting, according to Russia's Interfax news agency.
Russia has said it wants stability and cooperation to fight extremist groups, including the Islamic State, which is gaining ground in Central Asia. But Afghan officials are not happy with Russia's direct talks with the Taliban, which U.S. officials say are aimed at undermining their efforts.
The United States was not invited to participate in the talks.
The exclusion of Afghanistan from the first round of discussions raised concerns among officials in Kabul as well as in the United States.
While the United Nations says the Taliban is responsible for five times as many deaths and injuries, Islamic State group attacks are on the rise in Afghanistan, with a tenfold growth in 2016.
U.S. officials say Russia's contacts with the Taliban, along with Iran's and Pakistan's, lend them legitimacy and support while undermining the Afghan government and NATO efforts to fight the extremists.
The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan says thousands more U.S. troops are needed there to train Afghanistan's forces to better handle threats to security.
Source- VOA
3,000 Machinists Vote on Union at Boeing
Three thousand workers are scheduled to vote Wednesday on whether to join a union at a Boeing aircraft factory in South Carolina. The factory builds some of Boeing's 787 commercial jetliners.
The company says the union is making promises it cannot keep, and argues that $800 in annual union dues would be a pay cut for workers.
The union says workers represented by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers at other Boeing facilities get better pay and benefits, far outweighing the cost of dues.
This sometimes bitter campaign is being waged online, on television and in the workplace, with each side calling the other inaccurate or dishonest.
South Carolina has the lowest level of union representation in the nation, at 1.6 percent. State officials say businesses are more likely to bring jobs to an area where companies don't have to cope with unions.
If the union wins the right to represent workers at the plant, it will begin negotiating a contract seeking higher wages and more generous benefits.
Boeing is the largest aerospace company in the world, and the largest U.S. exporter with 148,000 employees.